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January 2014
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Gary Hoban: Slowmation and much more

Today I happened to attend a presentation by Garry Hoban – a professor of science education from the University of Wollongong in Australia. In his presentation organized by the Centre of Teaching and Learning and Technology at UBC (CTLT) Garry discussed how he uses Slowmation with his pre-service primary teachers. I discussed this project to some extent in my earlier post: http://scienceres-edcp-educ.sites.olt.ubc.ca/2013/12/28/digiexplanations-learning-and-communicating-science-with-student-created-media/. However, what I will remember from the talk is this simple but very important idea: in order to be engaged in learning students have to have a chance to make decision. Active engagement means having an opportunity to decide how they will learn, maybe partially what they will learn, and how they will be assessed. This might sound too open, and yet it makes sense to me. If we tell the students what to learn, how to learn, how exactly they will be assessed, there is nothing left for them to decide and there is little chance they will be able to take responsibility for their own learning. It resonated with me, especially with my graduate courses that explore the use of technology in mathematics and science education. I think these are powerful ideas that can be implemented successfully in the technology-enhanced classroom.

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